Şiran

Şiran, also Karaca, is a town and district of Gümüşhane Province in the Black Sea region of Turkey. It is one of the points of passage between Eastern Anatolia and Black Sea regions of Turkey, in the sense that the western road departing from Erzincan towards the Zigana Pass (the key pass between the two geographies) has its last urban stop in Şiran. According to the 2010 census, population of the district is 17,600 of which 8,207 live in the town of Şiran. The district covers an area of 928km2 (358sqmi), and the town lies at an elevation of 1,457m (4,780ft).

Name

The name comes from Persian and means "the lions", although it is most likely to be an adaptation of the former Greek name of Cheriana (Χερίανα) adopted after the Turkish settlement in the region after and possibly even slightly before the Battle of Manzikert.

History

Many of the northern villages of the district was home to minority populations of Pontic Greeks until the 1922 Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations, constituting the southern fringes of that community's extension. Some among the present population can also trace their roots to Greeks who had converted to Islam until as late as the end of the 19th century, as indicated by the Ottoman census and changed village names (for example, the present village of "Evren" was formerly called "Sefker").

Persian wine

History

Recent archaeological research has pushed back the date of the known origin of wine making in Persia far beyond that which writers earlier in the 20th century had envisaged. Excavations at the Godin Tepe site in the Zagros mountains (Badler, 1995; McGovern and Michel, 1995; McGovern, 2003), have revealed pottery vessels dating from c. 3100–2900 BC containing tartaric acid, almost certainly indicating the former presence of wine. Even earlier evidence was found at the site of Hajji Firuz Tepe, also in the Zagros mountains. Here, McGovern et al. (1996) used chemical analyses of the residue of a Neolithic jar dating from as early as 5400–5000 BC to indicate high levels of tartaric acid, again suggesting that the fluid contained therein had been made from grapes.

As book of Immortal Land Persian:سرزمین جاوید‎‎ or Sar Zamin e Javid] (by Zabihollah Mansoori) says Ramian wines were world-famous in the Parthian Empire. Ramian Wine is now a California wine brand but Shiraz wines are famous across the globe.